A Blog about all things Star Trek, Doctor Who, Game of Thrones, Outlander and a lot more sci-fi

Tuesday, January 5, 2010

Russell T. Davies and His Favourite Doctor Who Moments

The Times Online conducted an Interview with Russell T. Davies, former Doctor Who show runner to ask him what his 10 favourite Doctor Moments- in the four years of show running - were.

The first 5 are:

1 Rose and the Doctor’s final goodbye, Doomsday (2006)The Doctor burns up a sun to say goodbye to Rose. I love this because it happens in the episode where the Daleks and Cybermen meet for the first time. The ultimate intergalactic smackdown — but the whole thing’s a romantic weepie in disguise! Ha ha! After we’d shot it, David and Billie had to go and have a good hug in the van. But I always knew I’d have to split up the Doctor and Rose — they were devoted to each other, there’s no way she’d go and marry King of the Zobulans, or stay at home with mum. So that huge, huge plot of parallel universes — Daleks one side, Cybermen the other, Earth in the middle and all that — only existed to put two characters on either side of a wall. You sort of work backwards, really.

2 Donna and the Doctor meet again, Partners in Crime (2008)The Doctor meets Donna again — him in the window, her at the door, and they mime the whole scene at each other. How funny were David and Catherine — how much did they grab that scene?! I also love the fact that it’s so perverse — when we cast Catherine, every fan seemed to be in dread of her delivering a comedy Nan- type performance, so to allay all their worries ... I give her the funniest scene ever! Hah.

3 “I think you need a Doctor”, The Parting of the Waves (2005)Rose has accidentally got the entire power of the Tardis stuck in her head, is losing her mind, and can be saved only by a diagnosis (“You need a doctor”) and treatment (their first kiss) from Chris Eccleston. This is the perversity of DoctorWho — you can clash styles like a hooligan. This show ram- raids genres. Because that’s a great big chunk of An Officer and a Gentleman- style dialogue rammed into the middle of an enormous Dalek invasion of Earth! Not a natural mix, but exciting! Oh I love Doctor Who, I LOVE IT.

4 Grandma has no face, The Idiot’s Lantern (2006)An ordinary terraced house in 1952. A mysterious knocking on the ceiling. The Doctor and Rose run upstairs, to Gran’s bedroom, burst in, and — she’s got no face! The grandmother has no face!! That’s not gonna be in many Top 10 lists, but that’s the point — it’s terrifying and surreal, but it’s normal, now. In 2004, that would have been Fantasy Highlight of the Year; now, it’s everyday, it’s just another great Doctor Who scene. That’s how much the temperature has raised. Plus, it’s written by Mark Gatiss, whom we adore.

5 The “Oh — so that’s why alien robots were trying to kill Madame de Pompadour! Amazing!” plot-resolution, The Girl in the Fireplace (2006)Written by Steven Moffat — just in case this becomes me, me, me. Best thing about it is, he loves, she dies, we blub — then in the very last second it’s revealed that the name of the spaceship, which is the motive for the whole plot, is SS Madame de Pompadour. It’s that mash-up again — the Greatest Weepie of All Time suddenly ends in a smack-bang sci-fi Twilight Zone plot twist.